Lord Newby
Main Page: Lord Newby (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, as my noble friend points out, this is another part of the inheritance which we are getting on with having to tidy up. On his specific questions, I can only apologise to the taxpayers who are caught up in this reconciliation exercise. We are trying to make the process as painless as possible. The bills for those owing less than £300 are being written off. That will entail a cost of some £600 million. The cost of the overall exercise, in which 90,000 letters a day are going out between now and Christmas to clear it up, will be up to £10 million.
Lord Newby
My Lords, in the light of the very low rates of interest involved in this procedure, does the Minister accept that for most taxpayers, what matters most is not the rate of interest but the speed with which repayments are made? Can he give the House an assurance that HMRC is taking every possible step to make repayments as quickly as possible?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, it is worth reminding ourselves that the great majority of PAYE self-assessments are done online—by 75 per cent of people who are self-assessed. For that largest group of taxpayers, repayments are in the ordinary course made as soon as two to three working days from filing, although there may be a slight delay in the peak in the year around 31 January. For the sort of exercise we are talking about, repayments are normally made within seven working days. That is indeed the thing to focus on rather more than the precise rate of interest.